Women walking the Dorset landscape
Our walks
Someone described these walks as ‘rewilding the body and brain’. Asked to explain, they said – walking puts you back in touch, not just with nature and natural processes, it also rebalances your personal ecosystem. Walking clears out the noise of modern life and lets your own landscape emerge.
Findlater & Sisters’ walks are designed for a range of abilities and distances. Before each walk you will receive detailed instructions for accessing the start point. Our preferred location finder is What Three Words. Click on the dates below to book a walk with us soon. Our walks are free.
Renewal and hope in the Dorset hills
BOOK NOW: new dates soon
(7.5 miles. A few steep ascents)
10.30am - 2pm
Sunday 1st February is Imbolc, a festival celebrated by our ancestors to mark the midpoint between the winter solstice and spring equinox. On this walk, as well as revelling in the longer days, we’ll encounter a Dorset woman whose actions gave others a chance to live, and whose story is part of our Dorset landscape.
From Abbotsbury, we’ll climb up to the Iron Age hill forts and ceremonial stones where the ancient people of Dorset celebrated the coming of Spring. Then, passing Ashley Chase House and the ruin of St Luke’s Chapel, we’ll remember a cook for the Milne-Watson family called Mitzi Ponlechner, who saved the lives of her former employers by helping them flee Nazi Germany for safety in England. This walk takes us into timeless Dorset, deep history, and a story of sanctuary which resonates today.
A Valley of Dorset Women
BOOK NOW: Sunday 8th March
(10 Miles. Moderate – a few short steep hills)
10.00am - 3.30pm
Starting at the head of the Cerne Valley with a good stride along the Wessex Ridgeway, this walk encounters the lives of diverse and special Dorset. If you’ve read Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native, you’ll be familiar with Diggory Venn the ‘reddle man’, who travelled Dorset selling red ochre (reddle) to mark sheep. We’ll explore the path of Mary Ann Bull, a real reddle woman who visited local farms selling ochre. We will also meet a sculptor, a farmer, and a musician who died tragically young - all women whose stories are uncovered as we walk this walk landscape of women in history and modern memory.
The Valley of the Stones
BOOK NOW: Saturday 14th March
(5 miles. Gentle ascents)
10.00am - 2.00pm
This walk puts us in touch with the bones of ancient Dorset. We start with the Valley of the Stones near Little Bredy, an impressive scattering of sarsen stones decorating the valley with only the second recorded polissoir in the UK. This polishing stone is evidence that neolithic man and woman crafted their tools here 5,000 years ago. The Durotriges, the Iron Age tribe who occupied this part of Dorset were matriarchal, so we’ll celebrate the power of our female ancestors as we visit some of their earliest gathering sites. This ambling walk will visit other standing stones, The Grey Mare and her Colts, but mostly we’ll have a jolly good walk deep in the Dorset countryside.
Hidden Sapphic Dorset
BOOK NOW: Sunday 29th March
(8.7 miles. A few sharp ascents)
9.30am - 3.00pm
In the 1930s Valentine Ackland and Sylvia Townsend Warner set up home together in the village of Chaldon Herring, near Lulworth. They joined in village life and lived happily in this very rural outpost for many years. Sylvia wrote for The New Yorker and was an eminent musicologist, Valentine her lover and a poet. Other notable residents included Elizabeth Muntz, a sculptor and the literary Powys brothers. We’ll start our walk at Ringstead and journey along the breathtaking Jurassic Coast before going inland to Chaldon Herring, and heading back.
Shoreline, Saints and Sea
BOOK NOW: new dates soon
(5 miles. Some short steep ascents – worth it for the views)
10.00am - 1.30pm
A rewarding walk through 5000 years of history on this circular route. Walking anti-clockwise from the car park, we’ll glimpse the ruined site of the monastery at Abbotsbury. St Catherine’s Chapel is complete and overlooks Chesil Beach. During the Medieval period St Catherine of Alexandria had a large female following. Her patronage included unmarried women, nurses, milliners, teachers and librarians. Many unmarried women made the pilgrimage to Abbotsbury to pray for a husband! As well a visit to the chapel we’ll enjoy the stunning views of the Jurassic Coast and Chesil Beach from the ridgeway, walk along the beach, and finish with an optional visit to the Chesil café.
Portland: Isle of independence
BOOK NOW: new dates soon
(5.5 miles. Moderate)
10.00am - 1.00pm
The rugged landscape of the Isle of Portland contrasts with the gentle hills of mainland Dorset, but its wild scenery created by years of quarrying and stormy weather provides wonderful walking routes. Portlanders have always been independent, and this included their women who would only agreed to marry the man of their choice once they had provided a baby – no baby, no marriage. Perhaps it was this independence that attracted birth control pioneer Marie Stopes to settle here.
Coast, Carving, and Compass: Mary Spencer Watson
BOOK NOW: Sunday 12th April
(7 miles. Some steep ascents)
10.00am - 2.30pm
The rugged landscape and stone of Dorset has been the inspiration for so many women artists. This walk follows the Purbeck coast where the sculptor Mary Spencer Watson (1913-2006) lived. The numerous quarries near her home at Dunshay Manor supplied the material for her artwork which was in great demand during her lifetime.
Starting at Worth Matravers, we’ll take the path to Chapman’s Pool and on to St Aldhelm’s chapel, along the coastal path and back to Worth Matravers, to finish at the Square and Compass pub.